NEXT Ganked! (3-2 EMEA Online)

I am a contrarian at heart.

I started Netrunner just a bit before Elevation's release, and have only started playing standard after that, so all I've known really is the kill meta. I don't enjoy it. Not as runner, not as corp. Running into Au Co. or Ob fills me with dread, I don't like playing as Au Co. and to be perfectly honest, Ob was too intimidating to learn to play as I was brewing this.

For my first in person event, I did however try out and really enjoy Wenjong's Honest Issuaq, and I grinded that on Jnet casuals to learn the ins and outs, and it got me thinking about maybe just trying to make a scoring deck myself.

With the Bankhar ban, ICE suddenly seemed to matter a whole lot more, and I wanted to try brewing a deck of my own. I selected Thunderbolt as it seemed to highlight ICE interaction, and thinking that it being HB, I could fit a lot of econ in there.

So I made an ungodly 65 card list with all the ideas. Cut it down to a bad 49 card version that relied a lot more on big bioroids, but the economy just wasn't there and most importantly couldn't keep up with runners. Ganked! and Mitra were already there though, I really like the shenanigans you can get up to with those 2.

I then iterated with a more Harmonics based ICE suite, which in hindsight was very similar to the Spring Loaded Bloops deck thad placed well in Sheffield, except I had cut the Spin Doctors entirely for more "specialist" ICE, namely Hammer and Semak-samun, and I also played around with different upgrades, thinking that maybe Mercia B4LL4RD had a place in here.

I rolled the Spin Doctors change back for the Leuven CO in the end. The deck was waaaaaaay too slow in person. Who knew a grindy glacier deck that gets fiddly with maths would be hampered by time limits ?

After that event, I made some more changes to finally get to the version I played at the online EMEA : I cut a Mitra to make the agenda suite more dense with Vulnerabilty Audit and I cut a couple pieces of ICE. With the slots I saved, I added some econ/click compression with Greasing the Palm, and after a couple post game discussions on Jnet, I also thought I'd experiment with NEXT Activation Command.

The Good :

If things fall into place, you'll be able to start creating a respectable ICE wall and score an early Stegodon(A lot of runners are afraid of face checking Thunderbolt ICE for some reason, so you can be a bit sneaky early). At that point, you can start building up the ICE layers, and play around with what you put in the remote. I'd recommend jamming at least a Ganked! in there, and don't hesitate to overinstall a Spin Doctor or a second Regolith over a partially emptied Regolith to sell that it's something the runner should check.

Vovô makes a lot your ICE very cheap if not straight up free to rez. A hypothetical remote with outermost Wave => Bloop => Bloop with a rezzed Vovô will cost you a mere 2 credits to rez. If the runner has a full breaker suite, say Curupira, Unity and Carmen, it will cost them 2 + 8 (!) + 8 (!!!) to break fully. If you're using a spin just before they reach the root and leaving them to find a Tranquility Home Grid and a Ganked! that's an unhappy runner.

This is also what NEXT Activation Command is for. You can use it as much as a scoring window insurance as a bluff, and the runner will pay a heavy price whatever the real prize is if they decide to run, especially if you get a Stegodon trigger too, as the functional + 4 ICE strength is huge, on top of safeguarding you from pesky Botuli and Boomerangs

Using Mitra to swap a known ICE with Týr will never not be funny, especially if there's a Ganked! waiting for the runner down the line. Mitra can also just kinda be a Corp side No Free Lunch, subsidising ICE rezzes in a worst case scenario

The stacking ICE is bad news for Matryoshka runners, and the 4 subroutines on a freshly rezzed Bloop will put a big dent in their back up Revolver too.

The Bad :

The econ is shaky at best. You will run low to the ground. With a Tranquility Home Grid and a Vovô, you can alleviate some of that strain, but installing 3 ICE on at least R&D, HQ and your remote is gonna be expensive whatever you do and you should also put at least 2 ICE in front of archives as soon as you can, to prevent untimely Pinholes. Wave can help too, but you need to have found a lot of harmonics to start actually making money, and at that point the runner will break it. I've had many, many jnet games where 2 transfers of wealth in a 3 turn interval ended my game and I just conceded there, especially when there's a Hermes in play too ; losing those 3 credits to the benefit of the runner puts you so far back, doubly so if you don't have that Tranq Vovô cushion to fall back on

Hermes is devastating to a lot of your game plans. If you're unlucky, they can just send your carefully placed unrezzed Bloop back to HQ, screwing your entire system over.

Bloop by itself is a dead card. You need another rezzed harmonic to make it work. Once one of them is though, it's not so bad. For that reason and to maximize Thunderbolt triggers, I'd honestly recommend installing two Bloops on the same server, either your remote or R&D.

Cezve. Your centrals will be vulnerable to it, no way around it, especially if you don't score at least a Stegodon. Once your ice has been rezzed it's a lot less scary and less expensive to break

The Agenda density means games get very swingy. It's so easy to end up with three 3-pointers in HQ, or to have the runner just touch two of them on single access R&D runs.

Orca , although rarely seen, is a "soft hard counter" to the deck

The Ugly :

Crim prevalence right now means that Echo and Ablative are kinda jokes to Curupira and Cezve. If the game goes long and you had an early Echo rez (two ifs already huh) , you can reasonably expect to see it get 4 or 5 counters with the rest of your Bloop / Stegodon machinations but that means nothing when Curupira has farmed 6 counters. Ablative you can still get some value out of on rez at least.

Hagen gets not scary too quickly. Once it's been rezzed, it's a mere one and half coffees to break with a Curupira and a full breaker suite.

You got no draw and very little agency past the Spins to deliberately trash Agendas and shuffle them back.

Again, I cannot stress this enough, the econ is rough.

Conclusion:

When things align a little bit, this deck is some of the most fun I've had playing Netrunner yet.

Big thanks to Alpi, mystermerry and Diogene for talking about the deck with me